US Politics: holding our breath waiting to see what happens next

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Yeah, whatever, but to what purpose? 

If Biden wants to appoint King for DNI?  Because that's what he wants, I guess.  Like I said, don't see much downside.  And I don't know where anyone made it some kind of rule chiseled in stone.  The only tangible downside is if a Dem (or Dem-leaning Independent) loses his seat in two years.  And if a Dem can't hold on to his seat that means they're in for a very bad night anyway, so what are we really talking about here?

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Why would the stock market fall?

Because that's what shoggoth howled will happen with the rigged election.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

28 minutes ago, DMC said:

Rules are made to be broken.

Especially when we're following the golden rule. 

[Gaston de Foix]

40 minutes ago, DMC said:

If Biden wants to appoint King for DNI?  Because that's what he wants, I guess.  Like I said, don't see much downside.  And I don't know where anyone made it some kind of rule chiseled in stone.  The only tangible downside is if a Dem (or Dem-leaning Independent) loses his seat in two years.  And if a Dem can't hold on to his seat that means they're in for a very bad night anyway, so what are we really talking about here?

Erm, remember Scott Brown? Remember how he won a special election in MA that cost the Dems their 60th seat? I mean fine, appoint a senator to do a job any number of people can do well.  

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Erm, remember Scott Brown? Remember how he won a special election in MA that cost the Dems their 60th seat?

Remember how that special election was before the midterms?  So under the same circumstances the Dems still would have had that 60th seat to pass the ACA?  And after the midterms losing that one seat didn't matter anyway?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Erm, remember Scott Brown? Remember how he won a special election in MA that cost the Dems their 60th seat? I mean fine, appoint a senator to do a job any number of people can do well.  

Matters not given how different the situation is, and someone to the left of King can fill the seat. Now, as your doctor, I highly advise that you put an ice cube on your left nipple, remove that cocaine from your anus, and if that doesn't work, take the wrapper from a stick of cinnamon gum , lick it, then slap it on to your forehead. 

[All Cats Are Bad]

1 hour ago, Gaston de Foix said:

l think the original rule proposed of no senators in the cabinet was a good rule.  To break that rule for Angus King? It makes little to no sense. 

Could she not vacate the seat?

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Actually, the preferred scenario on the Street by far was a Dem Senate, as well, because stimulus money.

Wall Street desperately want consumers to get more stimulus money and such and spend it. Think of the record earnings.

There is still a chance - GA runoffs on January 5 plus Kamala Harris as the President of the Senate as a tiebreaker - stimulus could still happen.

As was already stated upthread, the stimulus will happen regardless. It will most likely be smaller, but this is more than offset by lower taxes and the lack of rocking the boat. The tied Senate might be the best fine-tuned outcome for them (larger stimulus, no rocking the boat and at most moderately higher corporate taxes), but it's not something they could reliably count on and even now it's probably slightly less likely than not.

[Kalbear]

Wall Street loves divided government, because only big spending packages and bailout happen, and otherwise things are basically entirely stable. No big new regulations, no tax changes, no nothing. Yay for rich people!

Also, fuck you rich people! Looks like Biden is at least listening to Warren's camp on financial regulation and oversight.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-13/wall-street-knows-who-it-doesn-t-want-at-sec-gensler-or-bharara

[DMC]

26 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Wall Street loves divided government, because only big spending packages and bailout happen, and otherwise things are basically entirely stable.

That's..not really true.  Or at least only true with a GOP president facing a divided Congress.  Last time a Dem president was faced with a GOP-led chamber, austerity in the form of sequestration was introduced within eight months of the GOP taking back the House and hijacking the debt ceiling as leverage.  This undoubtedly slowed the Obama recovery.

[Kalbear]

34 minutes ago, DMC said:

That's..not really true.  Or at least only true with a GOP president facing a divided Congress.  Last time a Dem president was faced with a GOP-led chamber, austerity in the form of sequestration was introduced within eight months of the GOP taking back the House and hijacking the debt ceiling as leverage.  This undoubtedly slowed the Obama recovery.

And what did wall street do during that time?

The economy is not wall street. The economy didn't grow well, but the stock market did just fine. 

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

The economy didn't grow well, but the stock market did just fine. 

Nah, not really.  Not as good as it could have.  It was decidedly anemic for about about a year and a half after sequestration was instituted - the S&P downgrade that was a direct and immediate consequence of the debt ceiling crisis really didn't help - and growth was fairly muted throughout the rest of Obama's presidency.  Just look at the Dow trends.

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

Nah, not really.  Not as good as it could have.  It was decidedly anemic for about about a year and a half after sequestration was instituted - the S&P downgrade that was a direct and immediate consequence of the debt ceiling crisis really didn't help - and growth was fairly muted throughout the rest of Obama's presidency.  Just look at the Dow trends.

The Dow trends were literally the same as they were for Trump as they were for Obama. They looked like an almost perfect, boring growth. Hell, per Forbes I'm if anything understating it and Obama had his growth SIGNIFICANTLY better. It's not as good as Clinton (who also had divided govt) but it's pretty great.

Goldman Sachs says basically the same thing I did:

Quote

“A divided government scenario would lead to a smaller change in interest rates and a reduction in political uncertainty,” wrote a team led by David Kostin, chief equity strategist at Goldman Sachs.

And there are other articles on that too, if you like. 

Now, I agree with you that the economy under Obama didn't grow nearly as fast as it should have thanks to obstruction and austerity bullshit. But stocks? Oh, they went great. 

[DMC]

29 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

The Dow trends were literally the same as they were for Trump as they were for Obama. They looked like an almost perfect, boring growth. Hell, per Forbes I'm if anything understating it and Obama had his growth SIGNIFICANTLY better. It's not as good as Clinton (who also had divided govt) but it's pretty great.

Yikes.  What a misunderstanding of the links you give.  The first 24 months of the Obama presidency did grow just as well as the first 24 months of the Trump presidency - as both those links show.  Guess what?  That was under unified government for each.  Then they each encountered divided government, and growth leveled off.  In Obama's case, there's a drop off in the 28th month, exactly when the S&P issued a "negative" outlook on the US' credit rating.  In other words, exactly the same time as the GOP taking back the House and confronting a Democratic president.  Like, that's literally what the first link you're citing shows.

As for you agreeing with Wall Street that divided government will mean all kinds of goodness, so?  As I said...

5 hours ago, DMC said:

Anyway, on what Wall Street "anticipates," they are the highest level of stupid when it comes to trying to gauge what's going on inside the beltway, so I don't really think it matters.

Also, it's rather ridiculous to treat the market as almost orthoganal to the economy, which you kind of seem to be doing here.  Are they the same?  Of course not.  But the market is obviously a very important aspect of the economy.

Anyway, this is losing the forest for the trees.  My point was first - your assertion is wrong that divided government only leads to "big spending packages and bailout."  What you mean to say is that happens with a GOP president and a Dem Congress.  Under the last Democratic president, the GOP curtailed spending and somehow shifted responsibility of the GFC bailouts to Obama instead of their president that got us into it.  Even under Clinton, the Gingrich Congress was obsessed with balanced budgets.  That simply happened to work because it was a boom period.

Second, the suggestion "things are stable" under divided government is ridiculous.  Definitely not necessarily divided government's fault, but have things been stable since January 2019?  Were they stable from January 2007 to 2009?  Were they stable when the GOP House took over in 2011 precipitating the debt ceiling crisis?  Hell, were they stable from May 2001 to January 2003 after Jeffords' party switch gave the Dems the majority in the Senate?  Those are the last four times we've had divided government, and I wouldn't describe any as stable - for the economy and the stock market - especially at the beginning.

[mormont]

So Trump is now prepared to admit the possibility that the next administration might not be his:

https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-time-will-tell-who-will-be-in-the-white-house-in-january-12131999

I expect that the next step will be hearing him explain how many people, including many very beautiful women and perhaps a large, manly veteran with a tear in his eye, amazing, a big strong man like that reduced to tears, can you believe it, have begged him - begged him - to keep fighting this really outrageous fraud in court, where of course he is certain to win, he has such a beautiful, wonderful case, so much evidence of foul play, really, it's unprecedented, everyone has said so, the scale of it, it's really horrible. But Donald has searched his heart and decided that in the best interests of the country, and out of the goodness of his heart, despite the fact that he clearly won, of course, that he should begin working with the Biden administration on a transition of power. Of course he will keep fighting these cases, not for himself you understand, but for ordinary decent Americans who deserve the best government, you really do. Then quietly, and without ever publicly conceding, he'll pack it in.

Until the day he dies, he'll never admit that he lost: he'll only say that he was cheated, that he was persuaded to leave office for the good of the country, that it was a big mistake as anything that goes wrong in future would never have happened under his watch, that he did the nation a huge favour by agreeing to be President in the first place, that he's much better off now that he's a businessman again, he could have been making so much money all along, andthat many people say his administration was the best ever. So much winning.

And of course he's currently running the shredding machines 24/7 and having the lawyers check everyone's NDAs.

But he will go.

[polishgenius]

This apparent trend of Republican governors suddenly becoming pro-mask is really quite telling

[Rippounet]

Want some dark humor?

(warning: trumpist propaganda)

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

39 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Want some dark humor?

(warning: trumpist propaganda)

 

I’d like to vomit

[Ran]

There is practically no part of that poem applicable to Trump. It's not so much propaganda as an attempt to make him feel better.

[Fragile Bird]

There will be an 11 mile charity run on Nov. 29 from Four Seasons Total Landscaping to the Four Seasons Hotel in the Comcast Center.

The Landscaping folks have had great fun with everything that has gone on, including selling a line of t-shirts that said things like “Make America Rake Again” and “Lawn and Order”. Sadly, everything sold out in a day.